M8 Lagoon Nebula and M20 Trifid Nebula

Taken two nights ago, utilizing a new field flattener I purchased from Orion Telescopes. This image is the full frame image with no cropping, which shows a great flat image end-to-end.

The image quality is okay. I was shooting into the border area between dark sky and a big light dome. Some more data with better focus will improve this a fair bit.

Imaging scope: Astrotelescopes 80mm ED refractor

Imaging camera: Nikon D7000

Guiding scope: William Optics 66mm Petzval refractor

Guiding camera: Orion Star Shoot Autoguider

Mount: Celestron CGEM

Light Frames: 6*6 mins @ ISO1250

Dark frames: 3*6 mins

Processed in Deep Sky Stacker, GIMP, Neat Image and Snapseed.

Lagoon (M8) and Triffid (M20) Nebulas

I am on the fence on this once. This is my first wide-field attempt at anything in this rich region of the sky, near Sagittarius and, thus the center of the Milky Way. There are a LOT of stars and patchy regions in this part of the sky, and it was a real test as far as capturing the images and processing them was concerned. I fiddled around with different processing techniques and settled on the result below. I want to go back and try some different things later. I was able to bring out a bit of color in both nebulas, and captured the denseness of the star fields nearby. As with my Pleiades shot in my previous post, I think a much longer exposure would have been better, and with guiding too. Happy with it for my first attempt, though.

Image Details:

• William Optics 66MM Refractor
• Mounted on a Meade 8" LX200 Classic with Milburn Wedge
• Nikon D40 DSLR
• ISO800
• 20 *120 second light frames
• 6*120 second dark frames
• 8* flat frames
  
• Stacked in Deep Sky Stacker
• Level and curve adjustment in GIMP
• Noise reduction in Neat Image
  

M8 Lagoon Nebula

Having a late night...

These two images were shot last night. This is my first attempt at a reflection nebula. The Lagoon is in the Sagittarius region, and is a brilliant area to observe naked eye. I managed to capture some nice color here. Still, post-processing it tough going.

Details:
7*25 second exposures
ISO 800
Deep Sky Stacker
Run through Noiseware

click on images for full size